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Deep Loot - Tablet Tuesday

Zyngor | Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Well well well, 18 days into Blaugust, and another lucky 13 days to go. Today is my 9th contribution.A couple weeks ago, I covered Pocket Mine during Tablet Tuesday. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to post anything last Tuesday, but I hope you were able to find something enjoyable to play. Anyways, I'm back this week for another Tablet Tuesday, and today I'll be briefly covering Deep Loot.

Deep Loot is a free underwater-based treasure hunting adventure by Monster and Monster. It has an inviting and retro pixelated style to it that should appeal to a wide range of players.

Basically, you are a diver urged by this cane-wielding fellow to enter the depths of the ocean and discover all the buried treasures it contains. There really isn't much of a story to this game - it plays as a very casual exploration game that you can endlessly keep diving to find all the goodies.

After tapping the screen to take your dive, you can tap anywhere to control your character. You'll find various fish and sea life on your excursions. Upon playing, you'll discover that some will not bother you until attacked, and others may attack you on sight. Clicking on any life will fire your laser to damage that target. Some fish may swarm in bunches if you attack one, so keep an eye out. The length that you can stay below before surfacing is based off the air tank meter, shown at the top left.

You'll want to be looking for chests to loot, marked rocks to mine for coin, and special areas that will usually contain chests, sometimes a special collection piece unique to that location, and sometimes it may also unlock a ship or suit piece.

After completing a dive, you'll see how many coins you made that dive. These coins can be used in the shop to pick up a variety of items to help improve your further dives. The Suit Store will let you pick from a variety of different suits, all with their strengths (and many, weaknesses). Next, the Ship Shop allows you to pick a different vessel you'll be using. Each ship offers a unique perk, which may interest you. Various locked ships at the bottom of the list can be unlocked for immediate use if you find the respective location while diving.

Next, the Upgrade Shack offers three very useful upgrades to your personal tools while diving. Upgrading the tank, drill, and weapon will let you stay down longer, fire through rock quicker, and do more damage to enemies, respectively. Finally, the Dive Supplies should be visited after every dig. Unlike some games which may charge real $$$ for these kinds of boosts, these only cost a nominal amount of coins to attain. You can have up to nine of each boost.

The Super Boost is used before you take your dive (shown at the top left of screen), and upon use will let you immediately travel to the second level of the ocean. Similarly used, the Turbo Boost will let you travel to the bottom level of the ocean. Remember that the enemies will become more difficult and the rock will take longer to drill the further you go down, so beware of using these when you first start the game. Also, some collection pieces may only be found at sites on specific levels, so you'll likely want to visit more than one zone of the ocean.

As shown in the image above, the other boosts are used during your adventure. They can be accessed through the white arrow at the bottom left. Keys available will be automatically used when clicking on a locked chest (even if you have zero keys, you can still mash a locked chest to smash it open). The air boost provides additional air to your meter, while the defense and attack boosts will respectively offer defensive and offensive bubbles to your character to thwart damage and provide additional attack power during battles.

When I first started playing, I thought it was another distance game, and I basically just had to get as far down as possible. This is definitely not true, as each level of the ocean contains its own unique discoveries and treasures. You'll also find two kinds of chests in each section - one is a regular chest that contains items that will provide an immediate money gain, and the other a locked chest that will also contain various special treasures used to complete collections.

Find the pieces before Ingen does!

The Collections page will let you scroll through the various treasure lots. If you have completed a set, you may sell it off to a buyer for a specified number of coins - you can also wait and hold onto it in hopes of getting more from a different buyer (or not sell it to anybody - your call). Selling it will let you collect from that set again during your journeys, and raise your star level on each per full collection. For me, I'll basically see completing each set three times as "winning" the game. I'm still very far off, only having completing a number of sets once thus far.

Overall, it's an enjoyable casual adventure game. If you have kids that enjoy treasure hunting games (or are a fan yourself), this is a great title to check out. The deepest depth of the ocean does contain a couple of actual deep-delving fish that could potentially frighten a small kid (angler/viperfish-like creatures), but due to the pixelated art style, it's not an accurate depiction and hopefully it should be fine. Some of the areas and scenes you'll see underwater are really neat, and many of the collection piece sets have some familiar themes (like an Indiana Jones theme set, or one with various sci-fi artifacts).

I think one of the best qualities of the game is how free it feels. The kind of boosts you can pick up in this game for earned coins may usually cost some micro-transaction in others. Really, the only real-cash purchases is a coin doubler that'll double all coins earned for each dive, and other $$$ purchases for various amounts of coin straight up. There is no energy component to this game that'll limit how many dives you can do before having to take a break. I've also been able to play the game without the need of a wireless connection, so this may be good for a long car/plane/train ride.